ALSO SHOWING
Hereditary (15)
The most intense thing in this latest US horror film isn’t a jump scare but a prolonged moment of trauma following an unspeakable tragedy. The tragedy itself – no spoilers, so don’t worry – is one of those disruptive moments that you know is coming almost from the start, yet when it happens, it still manages to shock. It’s the masterful way debut director Ari Aster deals with the aftermath, though, that resonates. Leaving us with no option but to contemplate the irreversible nature of what’s just happened, the film replicates the trance-like feeling of a nightmare that won’t end. It also further clues us in to what an odd film this is. Ostensibly a supernatural chiller about the unshakeable nature of a family curse, it sidesteps easy interpretation so stylishly that even when it’s dangling obvious horror movie tropes in front of us, there’s no danger of it being mistaken for a conventional genre exercise. Partly that’s down to how brilliantly acted it is, especially Toni Collette, cast here in a role that requires her to run the full gamut of parental anxieties while coming apart at the seams in a plausible way. She plays Annie, an artist who makes miniature autobiographical dioramas that reflect her fractious relationship with her late mother, whose recent death is the catalyst that sets her entire family – 13-year-old daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro), 17-year-old son Peter (Alex Wolff ), husband Steven (Gabriel Byrne) – on a path to ruin. Though it serves up its fair share of hoary old clichés and implausible plot turns, playing at times like the pilot episode of some brilliant new prestige TV show that unexpectedly jumps straight to the wigged-out season finale, at least Aster commits to those elements. Its dramatic meditations on grief eventually combine with its more supernatural elements to make it feel strangely timely: a satanic panic film for an era in which disruption and chaos have become the norm.
Supertroopers 2 (15)
Seventeen years on from the barely remembered comedy Super Troopers comes this crowd-funded sequel, which is getting a peculiarly wide release, given its very niche cult appeal. Dated man-child humour and lame culture-clashing gags are the order of the day as the now well-into-middle-age members of comedy troupe Broken Lizard return (alongside Brian Cox) to once again play the hapless highway patrol officers who this time are despatched to Canada to contend with a border dispute. As rubbish as it sounds.
The Happy Prince (15)
A passion project for Rupert Everett,
The Happy Prince sees the actor directing himself as Oscar Wilde in this biopic tracing his exile in Paris following his imprisonment for “gross indecency”. Everett clearly understands the pain Wilde endured in his final years, but as a writer/ director, he’s not quite up to the task of making its fractured structure compelling.
Studio 54 (15)
The rapid rise and even swifter decline of the legendary 1970s New York nightspot is the subject of Matt Tyrnauer’s entertaining documentary, which gets on record for the first time co-owner Ian Schrager’s side of the story. Mostly it’s a suitably wild ride, detailing his friendship with the late Steve Rubell, who became the public face of the club while Schrager remained in the background. Schrager’s butterwouldn’t-melt smile gets ever broader as the film delves into the club’s shady financial dealings, but the movie gets the story across effectively enough and makes a compelling case for the paradoxical importance of a night club that traded on exclusivity yet became a safe space for celebrating diversity in all its pansexual forms.